Vanilla Coke has finally made it to Australia. Anybody tried any yet? What’s it like?
read your web page, and in reply to the question, Vanilla Coke tastes like a
“coke spider” drink (where they put some icecream into a cup of coke). It’s
a subtle flavour, but quite nice. I tried some while I was over in Canada.
The verdict? Go try some, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
–Pro
Proof that pi is irrational on one compact page. I didn’t bother working through it, brain hurts enough just looking at it.
In other news, it’s not yet Summer and the temperature hit 35 today. Bring it on!
The new Porsche Cayenne 4WD sure is ugly. Bleck. The front is unappealing enough, but the back looks like something from the 70s.
I got my post about the Town Hall debate quoted by the guys at absoluteGod.
I picked up Galapagos in Dymocks after Fuzzy mentioned it. I’ve never read any of Kurt Vonnegut’s books before, but after reading the first few sample chapters of it on Amazon, decided it was interesting enough to buy. Vonnegut is a highly satirical and highly cynical author, especially about contemporary American culture and society. Galapagos is a satirical, wryly humourous book about all of humanity. It’s about the evolution of humans who get stranded on Galapagos (where Darwin originally developed his ideas of evolutionary theory). The humans seem to “de-evolve” into seal-like creatures. Basically, the book takes a look at whether our brain really is the pinnacle of evolution or not, given that it is the sole attribute which has allowed us to rape our planet in the way we have:
To the credit of humanity as it used to be: more and more people were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic – were simply no damn good. In the microcosm of Hotel El Dorado, for example, widow Mary Hepburn, who had been taking all her meals in her room, was cursing her own brain sotto voce for the advice it was giving her, which was to commit suicide.
It also raises the question, why is the brain considered an evolutionary step forward? It’s thought provoking, enjoyable fun, although Vonnegut has this quirky habit of repeatedly telling us what is going to happen later in the book. But I guess it’s the ideas he’s raising and not so much the plot, which is just a ridiculous, fabulously interconneted vehicle used to get his message across. If you read it, you’ll see what I mean.
Breakfast of Champions is a weird book. It seems to be a mishmash of characters and ideas from other books he’s written, plus things from Vonnegut’s own life. In fact, he himself narates the story as a character within the story, but as also the author of the story. The epilogue actually has him screaming out to one of his characters, “I’m your creator!” Although the book has such a weird feel to it, you can still draw out his satirical observations on society and the people within it. Hard to explain, you have to read it. Breakfast is not as enjoyable as say, Galapagos, given its unconventionality (it gave me a headache at times), but that seems to be the way Vonnegut is.
Responses:
I own the collected works of Vonnegut for much the same reason as I own the collected works of Robert J. Sawyer, Orson Scott Card, Phillip K. Dick, J.D. Salinger and Stephen Chbosky (to mention a few). It is just the right blend of style and substance. too flashy, and its a pop phenomenon, too substantial and its a technical text. sometimes you can have all of both, but not often.
enjoy vonnegut, BoC is my personal favourite, although SF5 was a better novel… Player Piano is quite a read too…
– Kev
The place we ended up at over the weekend was Bermagui. Bermagui is a small town, about five hours south of Sydney, near Bega. It’s on the coast, and reputed to be one of the best fishing spots in Australia. Our hosts were a couple of family friends, Ron and Betty. Ron is a fishing enthusiast.
It was after dinner, about 9pm when we arrived at their house. It was in a quiet, unlit street, lined sporadically on one side with houses, and a cemetary shrouded in bushland on the other (“So Betty won’t have to go far to cart me!” Ron quipped later on, producing a furrowed brow from Betty.) Ron greeted us, “We thought you got lost! Come in, come in, I just got a fresh batch of nippers for bait when we go out tomorrow!” It wasn’t until we entered his garage that we realised how much of an enthusiast he was. In addition to his large red game fishing boat, Ron owned a second smaller vessel for river runs. It was that boat we were going to go out on the next day, as the ocean was a bit too choppy for open sea fishing. On the roof was a vast array of fishing rods, twenty or so. They all looked pretty similar to me.
“Why’ve you got so many rods?” mum exclaimed incredulously.
“Let me answer that with this: Why’ve you got so many dresses?”
“Oh, because each dress is for a different occassion…”
And that pretty much ended that.
He gesticulated wildly. “…And this is for barramundi. This is for bass. That one is for beach fishing. And these ones,” he paused, finger hovering up at series of around six rods covered with cloth, “are for marlin.” He climbed up a step ladder, dislodged one of the marlin rods, and came down. Marlin rods are big. Well, they need to be, especially when you’re trying to reel in an animal that can be more than four times heavier than you. The reel is a large, bulky clunk of metal, around which is wrapped some 600-pound fishing wire. My arms were getting tired just supporting it. Luckily when fishing, in most cases, the rod is held into place by a socket between your legs, in the chair on the game boat. The weight of the rod is supported by a harness strapped around your body.
“That metal clunk you’re holding is $3000,” Ron said.
“Uh, you better have it back then,” handing it quickly back to him. He chuckled.
The garage wall was adorned with various photos of Ron alongside marlin. One that took him seven minutes to catch. One that took thirty minutes. One that took over three hours. Apparently, on one trip out, he managed to land nine of the critters.
The next morning, I walked out the front door as Ron was finishing connecting the trailer to his 4-wheel drive. A couple of neighbours had come over for a chat. Their tiny three-legged dog, called Bandit, was hopping around with her nose in the bucket where all the nippers were, absolutely fascinated. Occasionally her head would jerk back with a yelp as one of the nippers grabbed at her nose. We fished out a nipper and gave it to her. She retreated off to the front lawn and proceeded to toy with the squirming crustacean, before gobbling it up. Bandit had lost her hind right leg when a tractor accidentally backed over it.
We arrived at the river at the top of high tide. It was an inlet to the sea, so it was a diluted saltwater that made the river. The fishing season was only starting up, so our catch wasn’t as bountiful as other times of the year. Three hours later, we’d caught some bream, blackfish, trevally, some poisonous pufferfish, and a few stingrays. Only five of the fish were above the minimum legal limit, and that was what we added to our dinner menu in addition to some fresh oysters, balmain bugs and calamari. At around 3pm, the tide was retreating rapidly, and threatened to maroon our boat in the river – some parts of which, were only a foot or so deep at that time. We actually did get stuck on a sandbank on the way back and had to jump out and pull the boat over it.
Dinner was a banquet of fresh seafood. We caught the second half of the footy grand final. Ron, being the doggies supporter that he is indignantly pointed out that, “The roosters only won because of the bulldogs,” and then watched The Cider House Rules. We got back to Sydney this evening. There are actually quite a lot of decent places around NSW for a long weekend getaway.
I’m off, down south along the coast until Monday. Family friend has a boat or something and we’re doing… stuff. Yeah you can tell I’ve been clued in to what’s going on… I don’t even remember the name of the place we’re going, it’s got some weird name.
Another reason to own a BMW M3 (not that you needed another reason to). Check out the comments, some are pretty funny!
Here’s a whole repository of sheet music for Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy compositions, for all types of instruments.
I got the RSS feed finally working, I hope. It needed a one line change of code, but, the powers of procrastination were strong.
BTA is a somewhat bizarre publication-in-production. You’ll have to have a bit of a browse to figure out what it is. Bizarre but intriguing.
Hrm, I just checked my guestbook for the first time in over a year, and amongst the usual mix of positive and abusive comments, I find something much more offensive… the guestbook equivalent of spammers. Appalling.
A friend is running a national music composition competition. It’s called the Jaxter Artist Awards. Entry fee is $25 for any original composition/song. You have to be under 35, but I don’t think that’s a problem given the demographics of this site’s readership :). Spread the word to any of your musically talented friends.
It was around 30 degrees today. You know what that means… the return of flies, mozzies and other assorted annoying insects. In other news, check out this cool optical illusion. {src: AJH}
Dave came back from Melbourne today, told me a pretty amusing story which I will now relay here. Dave and eleven of his friends hired three cars and set off west from Melbourne on the Great Ocean Drive. They had decided not to prebook accommodation, feeling “it would be more exciting that way”. They eventually arrived at Apollo Bay around 9pm and found a motel to stay in. However, they being a bunch of miserly, broke uni students, attempted to get themselves a discount. They told the innkeeper that there were only eight of them. To their dismay, their scam was undone when the third car in their convoy, which they had ordered to stay well out of sight until later, came trundling up the driveway. The innkeeper promptly kicked all of them out.
Now they had to find a new place to stay. Unfortunately, that day coincided with the end of the AFL Grand Final, and after doing the rounds in Apollo Bay, found there was absolutely zero accommodation left. So they sent off on the road again. They came to the next town along the road. Same result. No space. And the next. And the next. Well, there were spare rooms, but no establishment that could fit 12 extra bodies in. They could’ve split up and picked separate motels, but no, they were obstinate. They also started to declare they were a party of twelve, instead of eight, having learnt their lesson.
They hit the road again. By this time they were beginning to get freaked out. Midnight was approaching, the roads were deserted, and periodically a kangaroo would bound across the road out of the murky darkness, jolting the drivers back to alertness (their cars were bullbarless). They passed a lonely B&B joint along the highway but were too scared to enquire within. And so on and on they drove. Eventually, the convoy arrived at Port Campbell, I think it was, and still there was nothing. Options were starting to be thrown around, including sleeping in the car. I can only imagine the mood in each of the cars. A bunch of tired, grumpy, desparate uni students in the middle of nowhere, looking for shelter (I told you this story was dramatised).
Finally, at 1.30am, they arrived in Warrnambool, exhausted, and managed to book themselves into a motor inn, over 4 hours later. And get this, they had tried checking in to at least 25 different places after Apollo Bay.
Today’s well-rounded gentleman should know how to swear.
Tiny remote control cars you can “do up”. Sounds like an affordable hobby, unlike their big brothers which cost 1000 times more.
TOTSH is the first part of Feist’s new Conclave of the Shadows saga. It’s a novel about a single person, Talon, with a single non-branching plotline. Up until now, the Eastern realms of The Kingdom have been largely neglected in Feist’s books. In this one, however, we see Talon as the sole survivor from a community of mountain people in the East, grow up. The beginnings of this intriguing scenario, however, is not the best piece of Feist’s writings. When Talon starts his life debt, the book seems to meander along, without conviction or insight. A growing up tale without major significance. It’s only when Talon is brought into the Western realms, that things begin to get more interesting, and Feist slips back into his familiar writing style. Alas, we are again back in the Western realms, surrounded by the familiar figures of Pug and company. At the end, the story does move back into the East, setting up Talon for the rest of this saga. Talon’s a different sort of character in that he’s essentially a country boy, chockful of swordfighting and strategic talent. Hopefully, his roots play a large part in his future development, and he doesn’t turn into another Dash- or Locky-type character. It was a fairly enjoyable book, but it’s not Feist’s best writing.
Fairly decent. Kept my interest up throughout the film. I loved the shots through all the European cities (the cast must’ve had a ball!), most of which I’d visited a couple years ago. When Bourne is surveying the bridge for Conklin in Paris from atop a building, I think that building’s the Samaritaine department store?
Cooooool. A worthy household display piece. Just a bit expensive though (over A$500).
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